Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Portrait of a hi-tech tabby cat

I always love painting Bailey ... she’s so much fun with all her stripey-ness and her eye makeup and her stylish v-neck. I corrected the eyes from the last version; now she doesn’t look quite so cross-eyed.

It’s funny how different people will be drawn to different elements of a painting. When I showed this to my husband, his first response was, “That’s our Bailey!” Then: “I love the mouse -- you even showed the red sensory light inside. Cool.”

Here are the work-in-progress photos:

I started with a tonalist-inspired sketch using only mars black and titanium white:

Next I started playing with some color glazes to the different areas. Also, I thought her head looked too big, so you’ll see in the next few steps I tried different things to adjust the size of her head and neck in proportion to her body.

Now I’m starting to add the softness and fluffiness of the fur in her chest “v-neck” area. And a couple of little dark gray strokes define just the tiniest hint of a smile. I really had a hard time resisting adding whiskers until the very end. Sometimes it’s hard not to get caught up in little details too soon in the progress of a painting.

Here in the finished painting you can see that I lightened up the window area behind her head quite a bit, creating some lost edges at the top of the pile of books, at the back of the desk, and at the window frame. The back edge of the mouse pad was very soft where the light from the window was reflecting intensely off the desktop.

Having some lost edges along with a few heavily emphasized edges – like around Bailey’s ears, the bottom edge of her top paw, and one spot at the underside of her body where it casts a small shadow on the mouse pad - makes the viewer’s brain work just a little more, adding visual interest to the illustration.

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ABOUT ME

I’m an artist living in the farm country of north Louisiana, along with my husband, our four cats and five dogs.
I love to paint everything (including the walls in our house) and find constant inspiration in my daily life: dogs, cats, cows, horses, trees, fields, ponds and bayous, morning light, afternoon light ... you get the idea.
My work is greatly inspired by the style of America’s Golden Age of Illustration, particularly the work of Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and others.
I’ve been painting my whole life, and I have sold my work to patrons all over the USA, Canada, the UK and Europe. As a follower of Christ, and with God’s help, my daily goal is to live every aspect of my life to the glory of God, from the most mundane and necessary of chores to the work I enjoy the best, ever grateful to be able to share whatever gifts I most graciously have been given.

Find my art here, too

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Published!

AN ARTIST’S JOURNAL where family, friends and mysterious strangers can see my paintings as they’re created, and where I’m liable to write on just about anything – the joy of creating art; life in the country; and, as a follower of Christ, aspiring to glorify God in all I do.

I’m happy to say that my art and technique has been included in this book by UK author/artist Gill Barron, the fairly famous Painter of Everything (she’s well on her way to painting everything in the entire world, and doing a beautiful job of it, too).

I have two step-by-step projects in the book, as well as several other finished paintings used as illustrations.